Render Window / viewport Batch Render Script 1.0.0 for Maya (maya script)

Cant get desired results from maya batch render? Batch render from your renderView!

Q/A

Disc images

Date:	09/14/2013
Submitted by:	Howard Gardner

Hi,

I have a scene to render which is 60 frames long and includes a lot of raytraced refractions so it's taking a really long time to complete. When I render individual frames they come out as expected, but for some reason when I batch render the animation my main character is missing and I just get the rest of the environment. I assume this must be a memory issue...

Anyway, I downloaded your script as a work-around for the problem and I left it rendering overnight, but when I checked the progress this morning I see it's exported the frames as disc image files, not tiffs as I specified in the render settings window. I'm not sure how I can open these files, or if it's even possible to open them. Is this normal, or have I done something wrong?

Thanks,

Howard

Replies to this question:

Howard Gardner said about 13 years ago:

Hi Lucas, no I was rendering regular tiffs, but I've since tried saving the frames as uncompressed tiffs and EXRs, with the same result each time; it just spits out disc image files. In addition, I've noticed it only seems to be rendering a small area of the render view, taken from a rectangle in the bottom left of the screen. I'm not sure why it's doing that either, as I want the whole frame to render and had not selected any specific parts of it (see screenshot). I've noticed a couple of error messages which pop up in the script window while I'm trying this: 1) "# Warning: command fileBrowserDialog has been dprecated. Use fileDialog2 instead." 2) "// Warning: line 1841: Can't perform polySplit40 on selction" I don't know if either of these are significant? Thanks, Howard

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enviraldesign@gmail.com said about 13 years ago:

Howard, Were you by chance using uncompressed tiffs? I tried recreating the issue and managed to with uncompressed tiffs only. Regular tiffs in the render settings saved out as tiffs, as expected. It may also have something to do with your bit depth. One work around might be to try regular tiff, or if you're using it already, try exr, or something comparable and see if it still saves as disc, or something else, just as a test. However if that doesn't work, you may also check the tmp image directory of the project you had set, when you rendered with the script. One cool thing about maya is that it creates a tmp render file, with the proper bit depth, extension, and passes for every time you view port render. Same format as it would be if you batch rendered. So if you already rendered frames 0-60, for instsance, there's a good chance the right frames / extensions are sitting happily in your : project/images/tmp/ directory. Let me know! Lucas

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enviraldesign@gmail.com said about 13 years ago:

Howard, Warning 1 relates to a ui issue that shouldn't affect results. What version of maya area you using though? Warning 2 is related to some geo history in your scene that is not cooperating for some reason. if "polySplit40" is attached to the mesh that is not rendering in batch, it may be some of whats causing that issue in batch. The script uses the marquee render command as a 1 size fits all, sort of thing. This way you can render out a sequence that is just part of a frame, or the whole thing, depending on what you want. Simply marquee the entire render frame before rendering from the script and it should capture, render and save all of it each frame. Regarding the disc file format, its a strange problem.. I've run into it once before, but it was a long time ago and I don't remember what I did to fix it. I can't however recreate the issue on my end (been trying) exactly, got as far as getting .img frames from uncompressed tiffs.. Did you check the images/tmp directory? I'd recommend making a new scene, create a cube, and then try running the script with tiff, and similar render settings and see if it happens in a bare bones simple scene. then we can go from there : )

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Howard Gardner said about 13 years ago:

I'm using Maya 2013. I tried setting up a test scene using a cube as you suggested, then tried to recreate all the settings used for my other scene (rendering as tiffs; 1920x1080 pixels; Mental Ray rendering; ambient occlusion, colour management and final gather switched on) - this rendered the sequence as tiff files the way I'd expect it to. So I'm baffled why it's producing disc images for my other scene. Regarding the tmp folder; I did look in there and for each frame I've tried to render there is a corresponding file. However these are either all transparent (the EXRs) or all black (the tiffs) when I open them up in Photoshop. The only files in the tmp folder which look the way I'd expect are the few frames of the sequence which I rendered individually.

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enviraldesign@gmail.com said about 13 years ago:

Strange! It's possible then that marquee rendering is not working , where has hitting the full render button creates predictable results in the TMP folder? If that's the case, and doing a full frame render works, then I have uploaded another far simpler script with no gui that may do the trick for you in this instance. http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/script/viewport-renderview-batch-render-script-lite Instead of using the marquee render function, it uses the standard full render function, but still in batch. Again, with this you'll be overwriting the same image again and again unless you have frame numbers setup in the render settings as part of the file name. Give it a shot, and let me know if it works!

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enviraldesign@gmail.com said about 13 years ago:

Good to hear things are up and running for you again. If you have any scene files that spit out disc files that you can send me (non private data or a scene stripped down that still reproduces the prob) I will analyze it and make a revision to the script to not output those files, or make it easier to change. Lucas

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Howard Gardner said about 13 years ago:

Hi, sorry it's taken a while to get back on this; my PC broke and I fell behind on my studies but things are up and running again now. I have tried using this script for a couple of other scenes and it generally seems to be working now. However, for every file it writes into the 'tmp' folder I still get a corresponding disc image file appearing in 'images' and I have to periodically go through the folder to delete these. I've also used the non-GUI script on a couple of occasions and that works as expected (no disc image files being created). Howard

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enviraldesign@gmail.com said about 13 years ago:

Ah that's no good, good luck getting back up and running!

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Howard Gardner said about 13 years ago:

Thanks for this, I tried running the script yesterday just for one frame in the sequence and that seemed to work okay. I then tried running it for a series of 10 frames overnight but when I checked on it this morning the power supply has blown! I'm looking at what to do to fix it and will have to get back to you about this script at a later date once the machine is fixed :(

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